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Topic: Dried raspberries (Read 2304 times)

My favorite food discovery for the year... dried raspberries. I had excess this year and decided to try something new. You don't have to prepare them in any way, just dry them until hard and brittle. Take a couple days in my Ronco dehydrator. They are too dry to pop in you mouth, but throw a cup into a sour cream pound cake or some other favored cake and you will die and go to heaven. The raspberries will rehydrate just enough to become intense little flavor bombs of raspberry and no more soggy cake from excess moisture. You don't grow raspberries? Trust me, grow some next year!

Yum! Sounds great! I used make a lot of fruit wine years ago. 10-15 gallons of pure raspberry alone. Boysenberry and plum wines were my favorites...pure only. I never diluted with water or other juices, but it's so labor intensive I probably won't try it where I am now. I did plant about 9 varieties of apples: sweet, acid, bitter and aromatic, so I can make hard cider in a few years. Sigh, life can't be so bad when we can eat and drink so well! Post your recipes! PPPleeese!

I don't know about the mead recipe as my hubby is usually the one doing the liquid fermenting, but I do know that it was pure with just the honey for sweetener.

The raspberry liqueur was really easy.

I used a 1 gallon glass cookie jar (LOL) and filled it about half full with raspberries, I used some that had come out of our freezer for this. I dumped some in the jar covered with everclear and let it sit until the berries lost their colour. I think it went for about 3 or 4 weeks. I added a split vanilla bean and let it go for another 4 days, then strained. I measured the liquid and had 6 cups and made up an equal amount of simple syrup, so 6 cups. I made it fairly sweet because thats how I like it Combined them, and poured into bottles. Easy peasy.

I'll have to try that! Haven't made a liqueur before. It's too bad that running a still for alcohol is illegal here. A friend took some of his apple cider and condensed it using the freezer. It was really intense... but he said that method left very unhealthy types of alcohol in the mix that a still allows you remove.

If you really want to send the flavor over top when using raspberries for jam or baking...add in some lime juice and zest. It pairs perfectly with the raspberry. Raspberry and strawberries both suffer great losses in flavor and color if they are cooked in anyway. So I started making only no cook freezer jams. I use Sure Jell no sugar needed and per batch I use 1 cup sugar, 2 lbs raspberries, and the juice of one lime. Strawberries are the same, but I use a tablespoon or two of lemon juice instead of lime. You made need more or less sugar depending on the ripeness of the fruit. I use less with homegrown and more with store bought. This is a must try if you haven't already...warning, you can never go back to store bought!

I made some several years ago and we managed to squirrel away a couple jars in the freezer that lasted about five years. It was excellent even after all that time.

I went the extra mile with one batch and sieved the seeds out, making seedless raspberry freezer jam. Divine!

Strawberry freezer jam is also miles ahead of anything storebought.

My Dad has several rows of canes. Normally he lets me harvest what I want, but he also lets his wine-making buddy come over and gather some for raspberry wine. Next year I'm looking at raspberry liqueur.

Yes, divine is a good description of freezer jam! Particularly if you reduce the sugar down to a cup so there is still a lot of tart to balance the sweet. For a really tasty easy dessert or breakfast, toast with chevre and big dollop of freezer Jam. I have four cases raspberry & strawberry jam hogging the room in my freezer! Did I make too much jam? NO, I just need a bigger freezer! Seedless is nice, but I'm too lazy. I will remove them for raspberry ice cream or salad dressing though. I have a excellent recipe for both of those if anyone wants them, say so and I'll post. Yes, I'm definitely going to extent the row so I have enough for liqueur next year.